Archive for August, 2015

Marketing is an interesting business function and its aim is to promote and increase the leads into your business. How far can it go before promotional marketing become deceitful even when being truthful?

I was having lunch at a globally popular fast food chain when I noticed that they had stated that their recycled paper packaging was 100% chlorine free. Call me a cynic but let us start by recognising the legal requirement for this statement to be correct. Thus, I do believe that their paper packaging is 100% chlorine free, however this is not the point.

The assumption being made, by anyone who doesn’t know better, is that chlorine in the paper is a bad thing and that by making a notice about being 100% free of chlorine, the business is telling us about the good things they are doing for its customers. I will restate this….the assumption.

I know nothing about the recycling of paper other than the output is typically having a brownish colour which originally resulted in bleaching of the products to get the preferred white look of paper that people desire. I don’t know if that is still the case but again, I would assume that chlorine was one of the products used to do this.

As an aside, I once heard that a company created natural recycled paper from wood shavings collected from a timber factory. It came out too white and people weren’t buying it. They ended up putting brown dye into the mix so that people believed it was actually recycled!

Anyway, you might be wondering at this stage what my point is….because obviously my knowledge of paper recycling is incredibly limited and is something I should really Google to find out more.

The point is, that the paper might contain pesticides, carcinogens or some other really nasty thing….but all we know from the marketing is that it is 100% chlorine free. The business is getting positive feelings about its packaging, people thinking how good it is that they are protecting their customers and the environment from all of that dreaded chlorine.

What if chlorine isn’t even part of the normal paper recycling process? If it isn’t, would you feel deceived?

This type of marketing strategy is easy to deploy and can have positive benefits for your organisation. It is legally bound to be truthful, but done wrong it could be seen to be inherently deceitful. As an example, what if we started promoting Yorkshire business coaching as 100% Animal Cruelty Free! This would be truthful and is promoting something positive about the business but actually it is totally unrelated to the process of coaching. For information, we don’t coach animals, just people. The statement that we are 100% Animal Cruelty Free is therefore misleading to our customers and as a business we have a duty of care to not misrepresent our organisation.

I don’t think the answer is black and white, if a statement relates to a type of process in your organisation then it could validly be used, even if it isn’t actually a part of the process you use. For example, you produce bread and use a special raising agent to make the bread rise. Other businesses use yeast to make their bread rise. Thus even though yeast was never a part of your process it does belong to a related process. Hence indicating that your bread is 100% yeast free is a valid way to market in this fashion.

Care does need to be taken, but add this strategy to your marketing portfolio and see if you can get improved brand awareness and increased revenues from doing so.

Please remember, never be cruel to animals. They will thank you for it.

It is easy to be motivated when everything you touch turns to gold. When you are on a roll and making things happen you have heaps of motivation and energy. What do you do when this isn’t the case? What do you do when you are struggling with motivation and just can’t seem to find the energy to do what it takes? This is a great question and it is one that even the most successful people need to have an answer to.
Believe it or not the answer to this question is a simple one. You need, just like everyone who is striving for success, someone to be accountable to. Being self-employed you are the boss and don’t have someone looking over your shoulder pushing you. You are human and that means you won’t be motivating yourself at 100% all the time!
Consider is like a session at the gym. You think you push yourself hard to run that extra mile, cycle that extra 5 minutes or lift that heavy weight just one more time. Get a personal trainer involved and you will find out how much motivation you were missing, you will find our how much more you can achieve.
That is why the coaching industry is thriving around the world. Not just in sport, but across all businesses and in all industries, the benefits of having a business coach, or personal trainer for your business, is being realised. The reason is, as I mentioned already, that we are human and it is normal to have your down days. A good coach will know how to get you to do what it takes even on the days where you are flat and unmotivated. A good business coach will know how to get you to push yourself that little bit further to achieve greater benefits for you and your business.
Most people look for a coach to give them advice and direction. However quite often people need a business coach as someone to be accountable to, someone to help them keep up their motivation levels when they are unable to do it themselves.
If you are looking for someone to keep you on track and firing on all cylinders to success, contact us via the phone number at top left of screen or use our contact form here:http://www.yorkshirebusinesscoach.com/contact-for-free-consultation/

Yorkshire Business Coaching is brought to you by ThinkPositive Coaching Ltd and provides business coaching and advice to small businessesand companies in Hull, Leeds, Bradford, Harrogate, Otley, Huddersfield, Shipley, Wetherby, York and all of the surrounding Yorkshire areas.

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